Act I ( The World of Blood )
Marek Kowalczyk learned early that blood was easier to understand than people. Blood obeyed rules. It flowed when struck, dried out when left alone, spilled like water with the right intensity, but most importantly it left marks that could be tracked to a single undeniable cause - a weakness in people only he could see. People were less honest however. They lied with their eyes, their mouths, their actions but blood never lied, it was a valuable gem to him.
The gym was not a place of virtue or honor to Marek, it was a place of correction, discipline but at the heart of all, pleasure. The scent of his blood always stayed with him, clinging to his clothes like perfume, it poured out of his skin and on his gloves like correction. He had trained there since he was sixteen summers old, long enough for the uneven flooring and blinking fluorescent lights to feel familiar. He knew every edge where he stepped, every moment the light would flicker. But this did not mean he could control his rage, one day he trained with such vigor that he missed the bag and found concrete instead, his blood remained on that wall for weeks, months even years and nobody bothered to clean them. They were reminders of mistakes, of endurance and what happened when they hesitated. Marek did not hesitate, he never did. He always wrapped his hands tight and straining, his coach constantly warning him with immense worry that he'd wrapped them too tight, but as he always said "the pain was his roll call" . It meant everything to him, not just to his body, but it meant he was still good at what he did and that's what mattered most.
Some abided by the laws of boxing, following the tradition of discipline and control but Marek always knew the lies behind their oath, and that lie was that violence is respectable or makes it look respectable. But control was an illusion, what mattered was willingness, how far a man would dare to push his limits, the damage he was prepared to take and accept to deal more in return. He never lacked willingness but he lacked the will to forgive oneself, the will to back down when it was necessary to do so.
At twenty-five now Marek was prepared to get into the pro stage of underground boxing. In his amateur years he had won most of his fights, lost a few. Those losses always stayed with him the longest, etched into his ribs and jaw making the slight hitch in his breath feel like a scream of agony. Stairs were his arch nemesis, especially after he faced a young fighter who broke Marek's ribs with a devastating hook to his solar plexus. But even then, he returned. The pain only making him want to push harder.
Act II ( Spilled Ichor )
The crowd grew wild, shouting and screaming as Marek's professional debut was about to start. He stepped out of the corridor with controlled pride, his head bowed down, draped in white and red cloth. "Ladies and gentlemen!" The commentator began to speak, "The fighter in the red corner..." He continued, Polish chants echoing across the crowd in waves. "Coming all the way from Krakow!" The commentator's voice cracked slightly. "Please welcome..." A slight pause from the commentator made the crowd go quiet. "MAREK KOWALCZYK! THE POLISH EAGLE!" The commentator shouted with full commitment, his breath going ragged and his lungs begging for breath. Marek dropped his cloak and raised his fists in unison with the roaring crowd, he revealed a face scarred with determination and sharp with commitment. Marek did not flaunt any longer, his face stood calm almost emotionless only to lock onto the opposing corridor. "In the blue corner!" the other commentator spoke on his behalf. "The Ottoman who fractures the stones, with a mere look!" The young and short man stepped out, moving like lightning, sharp, almost playful. He wore no cloak, but a Turkish flag draped around his shoulders, the crowd cheered his name before it was even announced, yet the commentator laid out, as if the man's name is so known it didn't need to be announced. "Kerem, Yilmaz, Kerem, Yilmaz!" Echoed across from the crowd, growing stronger and stronger. The young man's brown orbs locked onto Marek's twin voids. The slight grin turning at Kerem's face made Marek recognize him instantly. Kerem's shoulders were loose, his gloves low, he bounced around the ring on the balls of his feet. The talent was easy to recognize when it moved that effortlessly. Not by face, which had grown much leaner since their last meeting or by the sharper jawline, or even the Turkish flag stitched onto the hem of his shorts. He recognized him by the way he stepped inside Marek's reach without fear. The referee brought them closer, explaining the rules, but none of them flinched. They stared down at each other as if two wolves were about to fight for food, but Marek was no wolf. He was a bear compared to him. They touched gloves, pure blood against pure talent.
Ring, ding, ding!
The bell rang and so the first round began.
"Didn't think you'd still be here." Kerem said snapping a jab against Marek's guard. "After last time." Marek took the hits like nothing, but his ribs remembered before Marek did. A phantom ache bloomed along his right side, old fractures protesting in quiet unison. Amateur leagues. A cramped gym just outside Lodz. Kerem was eighteen then, too fast, too reckless and certainly too gifted. He had slipped inside Marek's defense and cracked his ribs with a left hook that dropped him to one knee and ended the fight. But Marek said nothing at the faint memory. Kerem laughed bouncing on the balls of his feet once more. "Still as quiet as before, Marek? I might just crack a rib again." He darted in again, jab cross out. Clean and precise. Marek absorbed it, arms tight, feet steady. The punches landed but they didn't move him. Kerem noticed this, his smile thinned.
The second round evened things out a little.
Marek stopped following. He cut the ring instead, step by deliberate step letting Kerem burn energy on movement that brought him closer to the ropes. When Kerem came in too close, Marek answered not with speed but with weight and control. He delivered a short hook to Kerem's body, a forearm pressed into the chest. A shoulder leaned just long enough to remind Kerem that this was no longer the amateur ring.
"Careful," Marek said quietly, the first words he'd spoken. "You won't always be fast."
Kerem grinned softly absorbing the punch with a slight grunt that turned into a scoff. He circled away. He had dreamed of this moment for years, turning professional so that he could prove that talent can carry a man to ranks past men like Marek. Kerem knew the risk of boxing, even his father warned him, but he laughed then too. He was careful, smart and different from any kid.
With a flash Kerem's right slipped through Marek's guard and snapped his head back. The crowd erupted. Kerem raised his eyebrows as Marek staggered. "See?" A playful chuckle came from his lips as he bounced around Marek. "Still got it!"
Marek wiped the blood from his lip with his glove, stepping forward increasingly agitated.
The third round was slower, he began to touch Kerem, not hard, he controlled his frustration, letting it build up. Not yet. A jab disrupted Karem's rhythm, but Karem countered with a hook that made Marek nearly lose his balance. Marek let the youngster hit him, making Kerem swell up with pride before he punished his attempts. Each exchange ended the same, Kerem backing up just a little more urgently than before.
"You hit harder than before," Kerem admitted between breaths. "I guess age didn't soften you at all."
"No," Marek replied "It taught me where to strike."
Marek charged up a hook making Karem bounce to the side. To Karem's surprise, Marek had feinted and landed a horrifying overhand to Kerem's chin sending both sweat flying across the ring like blood and Kerem stumbling backwards, his vision blurring, his body nearly collapsing as he shattered to one knee. But his resolve carried him. "I must prove them wrong.." He thought as he rose to his feet making the crowd roar in surprise. But his gaze was filled with way less confidence than before.
By the fourth round, Kerem's resolve began to fracture.
His legs were still quick, but the timing was getting worse. He used the pocket as a shield, trying to prove something with combinations that ended just a centimeter short. Marek's body shots were like bulls ramming into Karem at this point. They weren't as strong but they dug deep into Kerem's liver and spleen making his ribs shake, a reminder to what he did to Marek.
"Why won't you go down?" Kerem muttered after a clinch, forehead pressed against Marek's shoulder.
Marek pushed him away. "Because I already did."
The fifth round completely changed the course of the fight.
The young Kerem overcommitted, a right straight thrown out of frustration instead of technique. Marek slipped it and countered with a left to the liver that folded Kerem sideways. The sound it made was dull in Marek's head, yet it echoed across the ring like a war drum. Marek thought he controlled himself, this was not true. Kerem saw the thirst for blood in Marek's eyes. He staggered back, not in pain, but in fear. His eyes were wide with terror, his breath gone and Marek followed, relentless. His fists felt like boulders, his arms like chains and his mind with one sole purpose: Victory.
Hook after hook, Kerem was cornered. All he could do was cover up and try to block. Kerem's instincts were screaming. He felt trapped beneath the very lights he thought were his home. Kerem managed to move past Marek, but his punches were shallow, slow not like they once were. Marek made a powerful counter straight to Karem's solar plexus making him stumble against the ropes and lose his breath.
"S-Stop..." Kerem gasped, begging breathlessly not to the referee, but to Marek.
Marek feinted another hook to his body, making Kerem lower his guard. Perfect, he wound up his right, and just for a moment the world felt slow. He saw the horror in Kerem's eyes. He tried to hesitate, but he was a fraction too late. The powerful hook connected to the back of Kerem's head sending a powerful shockwave through the ring. Kerem's body slowly started to fall, frail and broken. The crowd erupted and Marek gazed down at the fallen Ottoman. Kerem lay on the boxing ring, staring at the lights he had once dreamed of being beneath. He thought of his father, of Istanbul. Of the gym where he'd first learned to move his feet. Of the future he had been so sure would wait for him.
"I-I'm sorry.." Marek said not loudly, but barely. However the man who spoke the most, did not answer. He couldn't.
From that day on, Kerem Yilmaz never fought again, the damage to his ribs never properly healed, the damage to his head gave him eternal paralysis, he could not move for the rest of his life, the speed was lost. But the fear stayed.
Act III ( Blood does not mean victory )
The ring emptied faster than Marek had expected.
Medics rushed in, the referee waved his arms and shouted for the medical team to quickly arrive. Voices overlapped into Marek's head like old TV noise but without shape. The crowd still roared but it felt distant, like it was heard underwater. Marek knelt where he was, his glove hovering uselessly over Kerem's broken body, unsure where to touch, terrified that contact itself might finish what he had started. Blood pooled beneath where Kerem lied, thin and dark, spreading slow, like he was on a canvas.
Marek stared at it.
For the first time in his life, blood did not explain anything.
He had always believed it was honest, that it told him who was weak and who was strong, who deserved to fall and who deserved to rise. It had always been a language he understood better than words, cleaner than faces or voices. But now it sat there, mute, still. It did not point in Kerem's defense or a flaw in his technique. It pointed back at him, as if accusing him.
His hands began to shake.
The realization came not as guilt, but as something as cold as blood. It was precise: This could not be undone. No amount of endurance, no return to the gym and wrapping his hands tightly to the point of erasing the fact he had always crossed the line he hadn't known was real until it was already behind him.
He looked young.
Marek thought about everything in that moment, about the cramped gym outside Lodz, the first time he fell to his knee, how pain hardened him instead of teaching him when to stop. He understood now that what he'd mistaken for strength was simply a refusal. Refusal to forgive, to stop, to see the cost until it was too late.
Violence always had a meaning to Marek, it always did, it was like Polish to him, yet now it has no meaning.
All it had was weight.
He knelt there like a broken statue before he was pushed by the medics who lifted Kerem onto the stretcher. Marek stood slowly, his legs unsteady not from exhaustion but from fear. And the only thing he feared now, was himself.
The ball never rang to end this round, Marek knew this sickening certainty. Something cracked inside him just as unfixable as Kerem's body had.
Act IV ( Weight )
Three and a half years have already passed, Marek has still not forgotten. He flew all the way to Istanbul so he could visit Kerem. The hospital smelled like nothing he knew before, there was no iron in the air, no familiar sting. Even surfaces were clean to the point of cruelty, white walls, soft lights and machines that would make Marek disgusted, but they did not. He stood in the doorway for a long time before he had the courage to enter. Kerem lay still in his bed, unable to move. Tubes traced lines across his chest like pale veins. His eyes were open, staring at nothing reflecting light without focus. Breathing happened for him now, but he did not breathe on his own, he was forced to breathe by a machine. Marek took a step closer "I won," he thought shallowly, the word sickened him sending a painful sting deep into his gut. He had stopped fighting months after that night. Not dramatically. He just didn't go back, the bag was still waiting to be punched, the wall still stained with old mistakes but the pain was no longer a roll call. It just felt like a dull noise. He tried other work, quieter work, anything that didn't involve his hands turning into weapons, none that spilled blood. None of it wiped the image of what he saw in Kerem's eyes that night, he knew Kerem was not afraid of losing, but afraid of what Marek had become.
He sat beside his bed.
"I didn't mean to," Marek said, his voice hoarse and pointless. The words felt flat, they were spoken too late and Marek knew that. "I told myself it was the rules. That you knew the risk. That I was just better." His throat tightened as he swallowed. "That's the lie I lived in." His voice cracked but Kerem did not move. His chest rose and fell, unbothered by the confession. Marek stepped back for a moment staring at his hands like they were the pit of a bottomless void, they were scarred and thick, the same hands that once brought him the answer. Blood had always told him the truth, but it never told him when it was enough.
"I thought pain made me an honest man," Marek whispered "But all it did was make me loud."
He stayed there until it was already nightfall, visiting hours ended and nobody came to tell him to leave. Guilt didn't come as tears anymore. It sat in him, like a second spine holding him upright long after he deserved to fold.
When he finally raised to his feet, he did not touch him, he did not apologize again. Some damage does not accept words.
At the door, Marek paused.
He understood now that life would continue not because he deserved it, but because it just does. That understanding was not peace; it was a responsibility he would carry quietly without absolution. Blood had once carried trust within him, now there was an absence. A stillness, a silence of a man who would never step beneath the lights again, that taught him what violence really cost.
For the first time in his life, he did not look for blood to remind him he was still there. He looked at Karim.